Examining the role of feedback messages in undergraduate students’ writing performance during an online peer assessment activity

This study therefore aims to explore the role of feedback messages in students’ writing performance. The peer feedback messages given by 47 undergraduate students in a three-round online peer assessment review were firstly examined by a series of content analyses regarding the affective, cognitive, and metacognitive aspects of the comments. The influences of the feedback messages on the students’ performance progression during the three rounds of review were then explored. The results show that the students tended to provide cognitive comments to their peers. Cognitive feedback (direct correction, personal opinion, or guidance for revision) was more helpful for the students’ writing learning gains than was affective feedback (praise or opposing comments) and metacognitive feedback (evaluating or reflecting comments). However, this effect on the students’ performance progression decreased in the last stage of the activity. To support the implementation of online peer assessment for undergraduate students, several mechanisms are proposed such as the integration of text analytics for processing natural language into an online peer assessment system, or the provision of a structured review form to scaffold the writing of cognition-oriented feedback.
Source: The Internet and Higher Education - Category: Information Technology Source Type: research